Archive for April, 2007

Over the years, real estate professionals have asked me whether we can create slide shows in place of a full Real Estate home tour which just don’t justify the cost of a full-on virtual tour. We’re excited to have been doing this successfully now for months, and its popularity is growing quickly in our market.

We’ve done hundreds of virtual tours at All About Virtual Tours and understand the logic which a viewer follows when looking at homes. The result is a means by which real estate professionals may show more than the allotted still photos on MLS, for a much reduced cost, while still using RTV’s crystal clear technology.

There are real estate videos on websites like YouTube that agents post for free and I just read in a Real Estate Newsletter that it’s being encouraged to post those videos. This could potentially be a major industry mistake! Not only do videos on youtube come off as very unprofessional they distract the home shopper from what they are doing. If you take that video and link it to your website and someone clicks it to see it, you’ve just sent that buyer down the road to another website with completely unrelated content.

Why in the world would it be encouraged to send buyers away to another site that doesn’t have anything to do with buying or selling homes? YouTube makes their income off advertising and advertising alone so one would think they are fairly adept at distracting ones attention. Attracting and encouraging people to look at ads and other videos is the sole purpose of their site.

Realtor.com and your website on the other hand should be focused on connecting potential buyers with other homes and keeping those buyers on your site. It’s up to the agent to keep the buyer enrolled in their services or their properties and not lose contact with that buyer. The only solution is for Realtor.com to host these videos which I see that they have recently starting doing this for free!! I am guessing they are offering this service to agents for the simple reasons as stated above. Keep clients on your website and make your site as sticky as possible. Don’t lose your connection with your prospect.

I am showing off my virtual tours at the home show in a booth curtesy of one of my customers. They needed something impressive to put on a plasma in there booth. I have done a number of virtual tours for this company and have a good relationship with them so they asked me if I would put something together (for promotional consideration.) Wink wink.

Anyway, one of the agents asked if I could show one of her virtual tours, I thought sure we had done the tour so I said sure. I went searching for the tour on the builders site and did not find it, she was unsure of the tour name so I asked her to email me the link. She asked how, and I told her she could just load the tour and press “share tour”. She said she could not find the share tour button or a way to email the tour.

A little later on the Realtor in question showed up at the show and directed me to where the tour link was located on her MLS listing. And again asked if I could show it on the big screen, I fouind the link and clicked on it. It became very aparent that it was NOT a REAL TOUR VISION TOUR.When it finally loaded, it poped up next to one of our toursn right there on the 60 inch plasma for all the world to see. Our tour, big and beautiful, and fast, her tour (done by her friend) small, slow, no hotspots, no branding, nothing.

She soon asked me to take it down and ordered three more virtual tours from us.Quality sells itself!

Working as a real estate transaction coordinator for several high end realtor’s created an overwhelming desire for a top notch virtual tour provider. We called everyone…literally! We used them once or twice and determined we needed to handle this aspect of the transaction ourselves. I started the research that lasted over two weeks of searching the web, calling the providers asking about their systems documenting, and reporting back to my team. After two weeks of intense research and comparisons of the tour quality, tour windows, and picture quality Real Tour Vision (RTV) was hands down the leader!

Real Tour Vision’s tours were clean, crisp and consistent. Our biggest complaints with RTV’s competitors were the fish eye photos, distorted viewers and fuzzy photography. My experience in photography made me a harsh critic! (I graduated from the Indiana University Journalism Institute in 1981 and they were very clear about what made a good shot and what destroyed it!) The challenge for this industry is to convey the photographer’s artistry to the internet. Real Tour Vision was the clear leader in accomplishing that goal. Having found the perfect conveyance and technology our next step was to hire a RTV photographer to do our tours. After an extensive discussion with RTV we decided to form our own company and become an RTV tour builder. I had the photography experience and education to handle the photography and Real Tour Vision gave me the courage to start my own company.

We know serve over 50 agencies in our area and have partnered with other RTV service providers in nearby zones who can cover our work while on vacation! The RTV team is a big help too. They have graciously turned down several would be RTV virtual tour providers that were too close to my area. They are there to help protect my important investment in this business. The RTV team has been wonderful in helping me in all situations to better serve my clients. I appreciate everyone and their dedication to making RTV the industry leader in virtual tours.

Starting a virtual tour company from scratch is a huge undertaking but the RTV staff has made it a much lighter load. I would highly recommend the RTV virtual tour system to anyone…Outside MY service area of course!  after all it is my goal to make Virtual Tours by Guardian THE number one virtual tour provider in my zone!

The Florida panhandle is experiencing an extreme buyer’s market. Real estate agents must market listing aggressively to stand out among the groves of property available for sale. Listings that lack quality photographs and virtual tours are simply overlooked. Sellers and buyers are demanding the information provided by virtual tours. Listings without them are severely disadvantaged.